Subversion!
by Ember Nickel
Summary: What was the point of becoming a Sith if no one feared you even enough to give you directions? Or, Vader pokes around the Jedi temple after massacring the students. He emerges somewhere unexpected. [AUExchange 2018 treat for AceQueenKing.]


_For the prompt "Darth Vader travels in time to the ST era." If you're a sequel trilogy devotee, this might not be your thing. :p_

The bodies of Younglings littered the outer halls of the Jedi Temple as Darth Vader made his way towards the inner sanctum. It was paranoid of him to continue searching, he knew, but he feared Palpatine's fury if he let any of the children slip through his grasp. Something was pulsing in the Force, more unsettled than the grief that racked the galaxy at the fall of Jedi across the systems. Someone hiding?

Vader hesitated outside the threshold of a shut door at the top of a winding stairwell. Surely none of the students would have fled there. It was forbidden to all but a few elect. He himself had turned away time and time again in his training, trying to follow the rules, to reach the potential he knew he was capable of.

It had all been for nothing. The Council had ignored him, and they were dead in their pride.

Vader unleashed his lightsaber and cut through the door. The room was smaller than he'd expected; Palpatine's lavatory was larger and better-decorated. There were no signs of life. In the center of the small square stood a few spikes of metal, forming a rough circle. Though there was no breeze, they seemed to chime as if lilting in the wind.

He studied them for a moment, reaching out with the Force. They did not seem to echo unknown powers, those secrets of the Dark that Palpatine had promised to teach him. Turning off his lightsaber, he stepped forward, then into the circle.

And he emerged on a busy city street. The Temple was nowhere in sight, though the surrounding buildings reminded him of that neighborhood of Coruscant. Hovercars raced through the air, unfamiliar faces blabbed on news screens, the sidewalks were full of humans, to say nothings of non-humans and droids. Some sort of advanced hyperspace transit, no doubt. Perhaps that was how the earliest Council members had conducted diplomacy before projection technology had advanced?

Glancing around, he took no notice of a silver droid officiously approaching him from behind. He bumped into Vader and glowered. "Watch where you're going!" he snapped.

"Sorry," he instinctively responded. "Must've lost my way."

He made no move to answer, turning and heading towards a translucent pyramid across the street.

"Excuse me," he called after the droid. "Could you tell me where I am?" What was the point of becoming a Sith if no one feared you even enough to give you directions?

He turned around. "The Memorial District of Coruscant. Obviously."

"Coruscant?" he echoed. "There's no such thing as the Memorial District." Or was there? He'd spent so little time outside the temple in his first years, and then the Clone Wars had seen him shuttled to all sorts of planets, that he'd had little time to explore the world where he'd found himself an initiate.

The droid was already bustling off towards the glassy building, and after a moment's reflection, Vader followed. Better to tail someone who looked like they had a destination in mind.

The interior was a far cry from the beautiful architecture outside. Vader was met with a lobby painted various shades of beige. The droid was not there; the only being in sight was a purple-skinned alien seated behind a desk. Her three eyes seemed to be equally spaced around her narrow head.

"Hello?" Vader asked. "Where am I?"

"This is the Jedi Order Historical Monument," she said. "Admission is ten credits, eight if you have a full-time student ID."

"The what?" he snapped. "Is this Coruscant?"

"Of course. I can pull up a city holomap if you need a vizaid."

"Just give me the fastest route to Marin Boulevard," Vader said. The sooner he got home to Padmé, the better.

"Certainly," said the staffer. She pulled up a vizaid nonetheless and projected the route: right on Zermelo, left on Kense, and then…

"Wait a minute," said Vader. "If North Zermelo Court is four blocks from here, then the Jedi Temple would be right across the street."

"Yes!" she said, narrowing her third eye. "We didn't get permission to build there, it's a protected archealogical site, but this plot was available!"

"Archaelogical site?" he echoed. "Don't toy with me. I demand answers!"

"After the establishment of the New Republic, this area was reserved—"

"New Republic?" said Vader. "Speak plainly or you will regret it."

Out of habit, he turned on his lightsaber. The alien looked as if she'd been about to answer, but then all of her eyes snapped to the weapon.

"Ah-ah, sorry, no weapons allowed in here, even replicas. But you're welcome to purchase a display lightsaber in the gift shop after the tour!"

"Display lightsaber?" Vader hissed. "These are the weapons of generations of warriors. Fools the Jedi may have been, but they are not meant to be merely traded for credits!"

"Well, of course they're not _real_ lightsabers," the woman said.

"Oh." That was a relief.

"They're just toys! Maybe you want to buy one for a child in your life?"

"I have no child," he murmured. "Not yet."

"That's fine. They make wonderful gifts!"

"The Jedi were fools," he snapped. "Insular, arrogant, judgmental fools. We should not pass on their legacy as pleasant trinkets!"

"Oh, I quite agree!" said a human standing behind him. "It's really a relief that critical historians have been able to reevaluate their legend and cut them down to size. Much better than antiquated mythmaking, don't you think?"

Vader whirled on him. "Who are you?"

"Uh, Recis Canady. One adult ticket, please!"

"Of course," said the clerk, as Canady paced around Vader to swipe his credichip.

"Nice saber," Canady laughed. "Where did you get it?"

"I built it myself," Vader snapped. "Between battles of the Clone Wars. Sliced my own kyber crystal."

"Uh-huh," said Canady, giving an almost-obsequious nod. "Sure you did."

"I think you're a little too early for the reenactors' fair," said the clerk. "But if you come back in Heldraff, you should enter the contest!"

"In Heldraff?" Vader asked. "Isn't it Heldraff 31st?"

Canady, grabbing his tickets, backed away from him. "Er, it's Gumrok 9th."

That was impossible. He knew Padmé's schedule; she was not due for a couple weeks, and he certainly knew the date. Unless…

Trying to contain his horror, he asked, "What _year_?"

"It depends on your epoch," said the clerk, while Canady hurried off, "but by common reckoning, it's year 29."

Vader, feeling the urge to turn on a lightsaber, realized his was still on and reluctantly dismissed it instead. "29 _what_?"

"29 years since the Battle of Yavin."

"I see," said Vader. "And I suppose that's memorialized in this...district?"

"Not particularly. You want the Hall of Civil War, which is over in Jarank District. This is mostly dedicated to the stories and legends of the Jedi."

"May I have a vizaid?"

"Of course," said the clerk, displaying the nearest path.

"Thank you," said Vader. He walked outside the building, and promptly vomited on the sidewalk.

Twenty-nine years since some era-defining battle he'd never heard of, and he'd seen most of what the Clone Wars had to offer. Was there a _new_ Republic? What had become of the old one? Some machination of Palpatine's?

Where was his new master? Surely the Jedi were extinct, from the way the clerk had spoken of them. He reached out in the Force, trying to sense the presence of other strengths.

No one greeted him. There were flares in the Force a great distance away, but those were untrained talents; anyone with both power and experience was heavily cloaked. Were the Sith hiding? Afraid of him?

He took to the path the clerk had directed. Once away from the ruins of the temple, he clearly recognized the buildings he knew from Coruscant. So this was the galaxy's future, or a future. Could it all be just a vision? Maybe he was still lying in the temple, weak from his fight…

At last he drew near a teal building. It looked new, but what did "new" even mean?

The door was locked, but that was no barrier to him. He called upon the Force, and the knob easily gave way. This building seemed to be staffed by an iron-tinted droid who did not notice, or care, the precise way Vader had entered.

"Hello," said Vader. "I'm looking for the...Civil War Hall?"

"The museum is closed for the evening," the droid began. "But I'm happy to say we still have tickets available for tonight's lecture."

"Lecture?"

"Yes, Erish Gealbrond will be discussing his new vidistream. Provocative stuff! The holowebs are buzzing about it."

"Can you summarize?" said Vader. " _Briefly_."

"Er, of course. Gealbrond believes that the Rebellion's rhetorical triumphs were not merely appeals to conscious, but that Leia Organa was covertly drawing on her secret Force powers to brainwash sympathizers into agreeing with her. Personally, I think he's overstating the potential of mind-control magic, but there is something a bit underhanded about her..."

"Organa?" Vader echoed. "Why do I know that name?"

"Leia Organa? She's only the most prominent strategist of the Galactic Civil War, and a long-time Senator in her own right—"

"Senator!" Vader echoed. "Yes, that fellow from Alderaan." Padmé was always discussing things with him in corners on and off, idealistic schemes to bring an end to the war.

"Oh, Bail Organa? Yes, he was an influencer in his time too. Really, a case of wasted potential in both cases."

"What?"

"Organa senior, of course, a guide to the Rebellion before his homeworld was obliterated. And Organa junior a rising force before the scandal of her birth parents..."

"So they're not related?"

"By law, yes, of course. But what rock have you been hiding under? Organa's legend isn't so bright considering her birth father was the Imperial tyrant, Darth Vader."

Vader tried to grasp the Force to steady himself, but to no avail; he fainted on the floor of the lobby.


End file.
